Robert Kuttner

Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, and professor at Brandeis University's Heller School. His latest book is Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism? In addition to writing for the Prospect, he writes for The Huffington Post, The Boston Globe, and the New York Review of Books.

Recent Articles

(AP Photo/Dake Kang) Fed Chair Janet Yellen speaks to a student at a job training center in Cleveland on September 26, 2017. D onald Trump would be wise to reappoint Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen. Trump has said he will decide by early November. Keeping Yellen would plainly serve Trump’s political interests. Yellen’s stewardship of the Fed has kept the recovery on track, stimulated inflation-free economic growth, and even permitted a little wage growth despite the wreckage of unions and the loss of labor power in the gig economy. The result is also record stock market levels. Yellen is one of Barack Obama’s best appointees, and perhaps the best Fed chair ever . Thanks to Yellen, Trump enjoys bragging rights for an economic boom not of his own making. So what’s not to like? For one thing, there’s the inescapable, galling fact that Trump’s nemesis, Obama, appointed her. For another, Yellen is a liberal Democrat. And third, Yellen found the economic sweet spot by combining strong...

AP Photo/Evan Vucci President Donald Trump makes a statement in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House. U ntil lately, Democrats have been comforting themselves over Trump’s nearly unbroken string of legislative losses. Despite a Republican majority in both houses of Congress, Trump and different factions of the GOP kept tripping over each other, denying him key legislative victories. His penchant for insulting leading Republican senators only adds to the dysfunction. Now, however, Trump may actually win a few. Consider the Affordable Care Act. Trump has found a way to cripple it via executive power, first by withholding insurance subsidies that are key to making the program affordable. By doing so, he destabilizes insurance markets, and courts the indignant opposition of every major medical and hospital group, as well as the insurance industry and many Republican politicians whose constituents have gained coverage under the ACA. But Trump’s sick obsession is to expunge...

(AP Photo/Julio Cortez) Former President Barack Obamaspeaks during the Goalkeepers Conference hosted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on September 20, 2017, in New York. N ot much ties together the incoherent ideology of Donald Trump, but one signal is all too clear through the noise: If Barack Obama did it, Trump is obsessively determined to expunge it—never mind whether the policy is good or bad, never mind how the policy comports with Trump’s other goals. Expunging Obama and his achievements is among the most overtly racist aspects of Trump’s none-too-subtle racism. Obama gave us eight years of leadership. This is his reward. Expunging Obama describes Trump’s crusade to destroy the Affordable Care Act, which in Republican demonology even carries his loathed predecessor’s name—Obamacare. It describes Trump’s insane decision to swamp one of the few islands of stability in the Middle East, the Iran nuclear deal, a superb and risky act of presidential statesmanship that paid...

AP Photo/Brynn Anderson Former White House strategist Steve Bannon speaks at a rally for U.S. Senate hopeful Roy Moore in Fairhope, Alabama I s Steve Bannon more dangerous outside the White House than in? And dangerous to whom? As long as he was in the White House, no matter how much Bannon’s freelancing annoyed President Trump and senior staffers, he was part of the Trump machinery and subject to a modicum of discipline. Now, Bannon is out. He’s organizing an electoral machine to Trump’s right, and certainly to the right of the Republican Senate leadership—and he hopes to bring that leadership down. For Bannon, the victory in the Alabama Senate primary of former Judge Roy Moore over Mitch McConnell’s favorite, incumbent Luther Strange, was just the beginning. Speaking after Moore defeated Strange, Bannon declared, “This is a populist nationalist conservative revolt. It’s a revolt against the elites in this country. It’s a revolt against the globalists among those elites.” Having...